NMR structure and mutagenesis of the FADD (Mort1) death-effector domain

When activated, membrane-bound receptors for Fas and tumour-necrosis factor initiate programmed cell death by recruiting the death domain of the adaptor protein FADD to the membrane. FADD then activates caspase 8 (also known as FLICE or MACH) through an interaction between the death-effector domains of FADD and caspase 8. This ultimately leads to the apoptotic response. Death-effector domains and homologous protein modules known as caspase-recruitment domains have been found in several proteins and are important regulators of caspase (FLICE) activity and of apoptosis. Here we describe the solution structure of a soluble, biologically active mutant of the FADD death-effector domain. The structure consists of six antiparallel, amphipathic alpha-helices and resembles the overall fold of the death domains of Fas and p75. Despite this structural similarity, mutations that inhibit protein-protein interactions involving the Fas death domain have no effect when introduced into the FADD death-effector domain. Instead, a hydrophobic region of the FADD death-effector domain that is not present in the death domains is vital for binding to FLICE and for apoptotic activity.     

The complexity of oblivious plans for orienting and distinguishing polygonal parts

In the problem ofparts feeding we are given a class of feasible operations for reorienting a part, and we are asked to find a fixed sequence of these operations which is guaranteed to bring the part into a known goal orientation from any possible initial orientation. Goldberg addressed this problem in [2], and showed that, for planar polygonal parts, there is always a sequence of simple operations which can be performed by a simple parallel-jaw gripper, which is guaranteed to orient the part (up to symmetry) without the use of any sensor information; he also conjectured thatO(n) steps are sufficient.In this paper we prove Goldberg's conjecture by explicitly constructing plans of at most2n – 1 steps for orienting polygonal parts in this model. We also give a lower bound on the number of steps required for such plans to show that this upper bound is tight.Finally, we extend these results to the problem ofdistinguishing among a finite set of parts using minimal sensing. Specifically, we assume that we are given a set of known polygonal parts, and a parallel-jaw gripper able to sense the distance between its jaws upon closure. We construct a simple oblivious plan of linear complexity which, when presented with a polygonal part, determines the index of this part.This research was supported in part by the NSF under Grant CCR-9207422, and by a Zumberge Fellowship. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in theProceedings of the Fourth Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry [1].     

Experimental realization of a new transistor

The authors report on the fabrication and characteristics of a unipolar, three-terminal, resonant-tunneling transistor. The operating principle of this new transistor is based on the fact that the quantum mechanical resonant-tunneling probability of hot electrons between the emitter and the collector is switched almost completely on and off, when either the base or the collector bias is swept. The emitter injects hot electrons to the second lowest subband of a thin (100 Å in this work) GaAs quantum well. Subsequently, the hot electrons will either resonantly tunnel to the collector, or relax to the lowest subband and contribute to the base current. As a result of resonant transmission, at 77 K the current-voltage characteristics of the transistor display negative differential resistance with extremely large (4691) peak-to-valley ratio. Furthermore, when biased near resonance, a maximum DC current gain of ~1.2 and a maximum AC current gain of ~11.9 were observed. The first use of a new `tunneling-in and tunneling-out' scheme in contacting a thin quantum well is also demonstrated     

Static and dynamic analysis of tunable two-section high-speeddistributed feedback laser utilizing the gain lever effect

Analysis of a novel semiconductor laser structure designed for obtaining wide tuning range along with high speed modulation response is presented. The laser consists of a composite cavity structure with two active (gain) sections. One of the sections has a grating corrugation while the other is flat. A detailed round-trip analysis is combined with the rate equations, which include sublinear gain/carrier relation, to perform steady-state and small-signal analysis. It is shown that the biasing (dc) condition of the different sections plays a critical role in the determination of the dynamic response of the device. In addition, we show that the gain-lever effect can be utilized for a considerable enhancement of the frequency modulation (FM) response. Other critical structural parameters such as the grating coupling coefficient and device geometry are discussed     

CO2激光器线偏振光输出腔内起偏器的研究

混合InGaAs光电二极管阵列ETX128FPA是16384元InGaAs焦平面阵列,供1.0～1.7μm波段内的近红外成象使用。这种128×128元的二维光电二极管阵列是使用钢冲击结合技术把InGaAs材料结合到高级的CMOS倍增管上而制成的。     

Implementation of a vector quantization codebook design technique based on a competitive learning artificial neural network

We describe an implementation of a vector quantization codebook design algorithm based on the frequencysensitive competitive learning artificial neural network. The implementation, designed for use on high-performance computers, employs both multitasking and vectorization techniques. A C version of the algorithm tested on a CRAY Y-MP8/864 is discussed. We show how the implementation can be used to perform vector quantization, and demonstrate its use in compressing digital video image data. Two images are used, with various size codebooks, to test the performance of the implementation. The results show that the supercomputer techniques employed have significantly decreased the total execution time without affecting vector quantization performance.This work was supported by a Cray University Research Award and by NASA Lewis research grant number NAG3-1164.     

台阶形陆架上孤立波传播的数值模拟

为了研究孤立波在带有陡升台地的陆架上的传播,用MAC方法求解了二维纳维尔-斯托克斯方程。本文在以下几点,改进了东京大学提出的修正的网格标记法:1.给出交错网格的新的标号系统;2.推导出自由表面上非规则星的新的压力迭代公式;3.对流函数、压力和速度使用了三值悬旗;4.把一维Burgers方程的部分守恒形式扩展用于二维N-S方程。这些使得程序更简单和精确。计算结果证卖,物理上很好地解释了孤立波的传播,入射波分成了反射波和透射波,然后开始分裂、破碎。 本文计算结果与线性波理论的结果很一致,但后者不能给出波运动的过程。     

�Լӿ��Ĵ���Ȼ�����ܽ������ʶ

本文根据四川天然气产能建设多年的实践,分析了产能建设的特点和存在问题,着重强调了当前搞好产能建设应注意的几个问题,供决策和工作参考。     

Ԥ���������ز����ʵķ���

本文根据物质平衡原理,对于定容和水驱凝析气藏提出了预测采收率的方法,并提出了凝析气藏的总采收率与干气和凝析油采收率的关系式。